Keysight Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: KEYS), a leading technology company that helps enterprises, service providers and governments accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world, has joined forces with NVIDIA, a company powering the next era of computing, to accelerate the development of flexible virtualized networks and high-value mobile services.

Mobile operators are in the process of transforming their networks using a dynamic virtualized radio access network (vRAN) architecture and open RAN (O-RAN) standard interfaces to cost-effectively and flexibly deliver a broad range of services that rely on low latencies and high throughput. A software-defined, elastic network architecture allows mobile operators to meet the requirements of a new digital era where consumer and industry users will benefit from high-value services in augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR), autonomous driving, smart factories and gaming.

Keysight offers solutions that enable mobile operators and network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) to validate 5G and legacy radio access as well as core networks that are critical to ensuring the end-user experience of applications using vRAN architecture. Keysight’s suite of UE emulation (UEE) solutions address specifications set by both 3GPP and O-RAN standards organizations which enabled NVIDIA to create a new software developer kit (SDK), Aerial, used by designers of 5G applications. Aerial uses a graphics processing unit (GPU) and artificial intelligence (AI) to bring new capabilities to real-time computing.

“Our collaboration with NVIDIA, using Keysight’s automated and scalable 5G UE emulation (UEE) solutions, helps the mobile industry create and deliver high-value 5G use cases,” said Giampaolo Tardioli, vice president and general manager of Keysight's network access group. “Keysight’s 5G solutions enable an ecosystem of network infrastructure providers and mobile operators to thoroughly validate the performance of virtualized 5G radio access and core network functionalities across different radio and optical interfaces.”

Keysight's UEE solutions enable users to verify radio access networks deployed in complex radio environments, accelerating verification over the air and for O-RAN interfaces in both lab and live field test environments. These solutions integrate sophisticated channel emulation capabilities and support a wide range of real-world scenarios in any 3GPP-specified frequency band for both protocol and load testing.

“Keysight’s solutions help us deliver leading-edge innovations to mobile operators that use virtualized 5G networks to offer AI services and highly immersive content to their customers,” said Chris Lamb, vice president of compute software at NVIDIA. “To support our goals through this decade of disruptive innovation in technology and applications, we rely on partners like Keysight, who offer unparalleled expertise and a breadth of solutions in multiple technology domains.”